12:30 Am
What a crazy day! Our group is finally all together as of 1 am this morning. Because of the crazy hour our rooms got a bit switched for the night and I wound up rooming with a nice lady named Pat. She was still on Tokyo time and her alarm went off at 5:30am, so the day started early. I have to remember that the water in the showers is really soft and takes a long time to get soap out. We had a really good breakfast of steamed rolls, noodles, fruit and potato tots…yum!
The first thing on our agenda was visiting the National Palace Museum. I got a few photos of the outside of the palace, but no cameras were allowed inside. This would have been a really cool event if we didn’t have to stay with a tour guide. She went into great detail about each item…for hours. After about 5 minutes I started to wander on my own…I couldnt take much more of wearing headphones to listen to her go on and on. There were some really cool exhibits! A large part of the tour covered pottery and hanging scrolls. I also was intrigued by the calligraphy art and giant (2 floors high) Buddha figure. After the tour finally ended we got to check out the gift shop, which was huge and had tons of stuff. After much debate about how badly I wanted to spend the money, I decided to buy two reproduction art works. One was of a Chinese looking horse while the other is beautiful blue hues of a mountain setting. I got a few gifts for people back home, just some small items. Next was lunch, which was a huge dish of something they called chicken, some squid, and noodles.
Next was one of the coolest events so far-a trip to the Jade Market. This is the definition of dangerous for me. I wanted to buy one of everything! There were countless jewel encrusted jade pendants, jade figures, diamonds, sapphires, and countless other gems for sale at a reasonable price. I could have spent all my money there and not thought twice about it. I managed to control my urge to buy shiny objects and settled for a purple sapphire necklace with two crystals above it and a small circle jade necklace that has a Chinese symbol inside. I also got a big carved pendant of jade. It was fun because we got to bargain the prices. I guess they understood my Chinese because they finally gave me a calculator and told me “put price you pay”. Either I’m really good or they finally got annoyed with my bartering attempt…lol. I was looking for a particular jade item and finally found it in the very back. This market was at least 3 warehouses big, full of priceless jewels. We can see the culture difference already!
On the way out there was a 4.0 earthquake. I didn’t even feel it, but others in our group did. The professor even thought it was just a passing train.
Next we had an alumni dinner with some student that had studied at UMF. They were very nice and the dinner was good too. I really liked the food that looked like pizza, even though we never did find out what it was. After dinner we broke into groups and the former students took us around downtown. The professor of the Taiwan University bought us some shaved ice cream, which is literally a pile of shaved ice with fruit and a little ice cream on top. It was strange, but good.
Some of the younger people in the group wanted to go to this famous club. I decided for once I would join them, not too optimistic about going out late and clubbing in a different country, but I didn’t want to miss out.
Now the story gets interesting! So we all get ready in our nice clothes, take the metro to the generally correct area and start searching for this club. We had to ask directions about 20 times, which is hard when you don’t speak Chinese. Finally we found it down some back alley and are waiting to pay the cover when the bouncer comes up and tells the boys they cannot get into the club because they are wearing shorts and flip flops. Mind you, the girls are all wearing the same attire. Apparently, if you want to go to clubs all men are required to wear long pants and tennis shoes, but the girls are encouraged to wear skanky clothes. After the boys argued for a bit with the bouncer, we moved on to wander the streets. We came upon some crazy clothes being sold for really cheap, so our plan changed to buying the clothes and then going back. With our affectionately dubbed MC Hammer pants, we trooped back to the club. Fail is an understatement. The bouncers called them girl pants and laughed us back out. I guess it was only fair since one of the guys still didn’t buy shoes, but tried to pull the pants over his flip flops. Like that wasn’t obvious!
We met some nice people on the way back from the club and they tried to get us into another club, but we ran into the same attire issue. I’m not incredibly disappointed and it makes a really funny story.
Well, I have to get up in a few hours so I will bid you a goodnight…I mean good morning…I mean evening for you.
What a crazy day! Our group is finally all together as of 1 am this morning. Because of the crazy hour our rooms got a bit switched for the night and I wound up rooming with a nice lady named Pat. She was still on Tokyo time and her alarm went off at 5:30am, so the day started early. I have to remember that the water in the showers is really soft and takes a long time to get soap out. We had a really good breakfast of steamed rolls, noodles, fruit and potato tots…yum!
The first thing on our agenda was visiting the National Palace Museum. I got a few photos of the outside of the palace, but no cameras were allowed inside. This would have been a really cool event if we didn’t have to stay with a tour guide. She went into great detail about each item…for hours. After about 5 minutes I started to wander on my own…I couldnt take much more of wearing headphones to listen to her go on and on. There were some really cool exhibits! A large part of the tour covered pottery and hanging scrolls. I also was intrigued by the calligraphy art and giant (2 floors high) Buddha figure. After the tour finally ended we got to check out the gift shop, which was huge and had tons of stuff. After much debate about how badly I wanted to spend the money, I decided to buy two reproduction art works. One was of a Chinese looking horse while the other is beautiful blue hues of a mountain setting. I got a few gifts for people back home, just some small items. Next was lunch, which was a huge dish of something they called chicken, some squid, and noodles.
Next was one of the coolest events so far-a trip to the Jade Market. This is the definition of dangerous for me. I wanted to buy one of everything! There were countless jewel encrusted jade pendants, jade figures, diamonds, sapphires, and countless other gems for sale at a reasonable price. I could have spent all my money there and not thought twice about it. I managed to control my urge to buy shiny objects and settled for a purple sapphire necklace with two crystals above it and a small circle jade necklace that has a Chinese symbol inside. I also got a big carved pendant of jade. It was fun because we got to bargain the prices. I guess they understood my Chinese because they finally gave me a calculator and told me “put price you pay”. Either I’m really good or they finally got annoyed with my bartering attempt…lol. I was looking for a particular jade item and finally found it in the very back. This market was at least 3 warehouses big, full of priceless jewels. We can see the culture difference already!
On the way out there was a 4.0 earthquake. I didn’t even feel it, but others in our group did. The professor even thought it was just a passing train.
Next we had an alumni dinner with some student that had studied at UMF. They were very nice and the dinner was good too. I really liked the food that looked like pizza, even though we never did find out what it was. After dinner we broke into groups and the former students took us around downtown. The professor of the Taiwan University bought us some shaved ice cream, which is literally a pile of shaved ice with fruit and a little ice cream on top. It was strange, but good.
Some of the younger people in the group wanted to go to this famous club. I decided for once I would join them, not too optimistic about going out late and clubbing in a different country, but I didn’t want to miss out.
Now the story gets interesting! So we all get ready in our nice clothes, take the metro to the generally correct area and start searching for this club. We had to ask directions about 20 times, which is hard when you don’t speak Chinese. Finally we found it down some back alley and are waiting to pay the cover when the bouncer comes up and tells the boys they cannot get into the club because they are wearing shorts and flip flops. Mind you, the girls are all wearing the same attire. Apparently, if you want to go to clubs all men are required to wear long pants and tennis shoes, but the girls are encouraged to wear skanky clothes. After the boys argued for a bit with the bouncer, we moved on to wander the streets. We came upon some crazy clothes being sold for really cheap, so our plan changed to buying the clothes and then going back. With our affectionately dubbed MC Hammer pants, we trooped back to the club. Fail is an understatement. The bouncers called them girl pants and laughed us back out. I guess it was only fair since one of the guys still didn’t buy shoes, but tried to pull the pants over his flip flops. Like that wasn’t obvious!
We met some nice people on the way back from the club and they tried to get us into another club, but we ran into the same attire issue. I’m not incredibly disappointed and it makes a really funny story.
Well, I have to get up in a few hours so I will bid you a goodnight…I mean good morning…I mean evening for you.
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